Background
Relation1 is a consulting and IT service firm, operating in the digital and e-commerce fields. The company is composed of 50 professionals in Canada across 3 offices in Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec. Relation1 delivers added value professional services that combine expertise in data, marketing, and IT Technologies.
Their main activities consist of:
- Analysis and strategic planning for marketing data and e-commerce initiatives
- Data-driven marketing and Business Intelligence
- Customer journey personalization
- Email marketing campaigns
- Loyalty programs
We had the pleasure of having a chat with Etienne Borella, head of the Project Management Office for their Montreal and Quebec offices. Etienne’s main responsibilities include the following:
- Overseeing projects and operations delivery
- Resource allocation and capacity planning
- Maintaining tools and practices deployment and optimization
Relation1 implemented Tempo's Jira resource management software about 6 months ago after having been introduced to it by one of our amazing Platinum Tempo partners, Valiantys.
The team is Agile inspired, but operates with fixed price/fixed scope contracts. They use Scrum / Kanban JIRA tools for internal projects and operations management.
Challenges
Before implementing Tempo Planner within their organization, Relation1 used to rely on an Excel spreadsheet on a shared drive. According to Etienne, the biggest issues they faced were conflicting updates and unclear information due to tedious effort of populating the relevant info.
Then, Tempo Planner came to the rescue.
“In a fast paced environment, with multiple simultaneous projects and operations, and numerous stakeholders across various offices, Tempo Planner has proved vital for team members who need to view resource allocation and plan time, on an almost daily basis.”
Solutions
When we asked Etienne what problems Tempo Planner solves for them, he simply said:
“Team planning, resource planning, and capacity planning”.
The features they use most in Tempo Planner are the team members timeline and the team capacity report.
Team Members timeline in Tempo Planner
Etienne elaborated:
“Since everybody (with the proper permission) can update the plan simultaneously, it saves a lot of time and frustration. We have an efficient 30-minute weekly meeting where we address allocation conflicts with all project managers. Since plans are linked to JIRA tasks and projects, everybody can immediately view what they are planned to do, and who planned that work."
He went on to say:
“Previously, we used to do our planning in Microsoft Excel, and information was less precise. Tempo Planner has given us a very useful visual representation with the timeline view that makes it easy to quickly see who is planned to work on what.”
Benefits
What about the benefits? How has life been after the implementation of Tempo Planner?
“Tempo Planner has helped us in fostering good planification practices.“
What about the staff members? When we asked Etienne how his team members have taken to the implementation of Tempo Planner, he said:
“Our team members enjoy the clarity of information. Especially the integration with JIRA and the visual representation that Tempo Planner offers.”
Relation1 has also adopted Tempo Timesheets, and are using accounts and teams, along with the Tempo API for syncing JIRA time spent on projects with their accounting system (MS Dynamics NAV) for their business needs.
A big thank you to Etienne and Relation1 for working with us on this story!
Interested in reading more? Find more of Tempo's success stories here.
